The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

“You don’t have to go,” I say softly.

All at once it seems impossible that she should go. She cannot possibly go. She must stay here, and lie next to me, and let me wrap my arm around her waist so that I can fall asleep with my nose buried in her musk-lemon hair. This is what’s real. This is what’s good.

“No, I really should,” she says.

She trails a fingertip down my chest, which is lightly slicked with sweat. Her fingertip finds my happy trail, draws slowly down the skin of my belly, and circles my navel. It’s exquisite torture. Eastlin’s jibe of the day before yesterday replays in my head, and I wonder if I should leave some kind of note on the door to warn him. Or a tie, maybe, like my dad says they did in college in the 1970s.

A tie? Who am I kidding. I don’t even own a tie.

She’s sitting on the bed next to me, her feet drawn up. Her bra is black, all lace and ribbons like a Halloween costume. She tucks a hank of hair behind one ear and watches me. Slowly, the finger inches its way down, devastating, deliberate, almost painful in its insistence, until it reaches the waistband of my jeans.

I shift myself without meaning to, aching, straining for her to touch me.

Does she know? Can she tell?

She must know. I can just make out her eyes in the dark, watching me.

Please, I think.

I should say it, I think.

I want to say it. But I’m afraid. She probably thinks I’ve done this a lot. Or worse, what if she doesn’t think I’ve done this a lot? What if she finds out I have no idea what I’m doing? My ex-girlfriend would never let us get this far.

I swallow, staring at Maddie, hard. She tugs on the waistband of my boxers, which stick up out of my jeans.

Oh my God.

“Please,” I whisper.

“Wes,” she whispers back. “I can’t. I have to get home.”

Her hand withdraws, and I see her silhouette move against the window, her back bending as she rummages on the floor, finding a tank top and pulling it over her head.

I groan in dismay.

A soft laugh reaches me through the dark.

I sit up, grasping for her. My hand finds her belly, soft and warm under her tank top. I bring my lips close to her ear.

“Are you sure?” I whisper.

Her hand closes over mine and removes it from her belly, placing it with resolve back on my own leg where it belongs.

“I’m sure,” she says in her regular voice.

I flop back against my pillow with a resigned sigh, arms cradling my head, while she gets to her feet, picking up a sock here, a bag there, lifting her arms to roll some of her hair into a thick knot on the top of her head. I watch her, a lazy smile on my face.

She hops while pulling on a shoe, clonks into something, says, “Ow.”

“Do you want me to put on the light?” I ask her.

A knee presses into the mattress next to my hip and then her weight is on top of me. Maddie leans down, her hands on my cheeks, which have grown stubbly in the past few hours. I feel her breath on my face, a loosed strand of her hair brushing against my shoulder. Slowly, deliberately, she moves her lips to meet mine. It’s almost more than I can take, and my hands move to her hips, my kiss getting more insistent. Her weight feels perfect, on top of me.

“Wes,” she says, disentangling herself from my grip and climbing off the bed.

“Stay,” I say. “Please? Nothing has to happen. We can just sleep.”

Am I lying? I don’t think I am. I hope I’m not. I swear to myself that I’m not lying to her in the same moment that I try to remember which desk drawer holds Eastlin’s seemingly inexhaustible condom supply.

“You don’t understand,” she says.

There’s a pause, and I wonder if she’s going to tell me something crazy, like she has an STD or something. Or what if it’s something worse? I flash to the girl in the uptown jeans from the séance the other night, the one with the baby, and my stomach makes a sickening lurch.

Instead, she sighs and says, “I have a curfew, okay? I have to get home.”